In this tutorial you will learn a few basics in Cinema 4D using a little mograph and some tags to create some flying liquid that will form into a cube shape. The final effect is cool but the techniques used can be applied to a wider range of effects. This is part one of a three part series. In this edition we will create the initial animation of water flying through the air. In part two we will create a liquid like material with displacement mapping and in the third and final part we will be creating the illusion of our flying water to settle and form a shape.

This is a beginner to intermediate level tutorial.

Previews

(HD Version)

The Flying Water Tutorial Part 1 of 3

I am using Cinema 4D R11 and your interface may be a little different from mine if you are using an older release version but I have reset my interface to the default in hope of making this as easy as possible to follow along with.

The first thing we will do in our new project file is create a cube object. You can click once in the top menu and it will create a cube object with the default settings.

We are going to be using this cube along with a tag and the MoGraph module to create a random spline. The primitive object defaults to being larger in size than what we need so we will first select our newly created cube and in the Attributes panel click on the Object tab. This will give us option for size, number of segments, seperating surfaces and fillet the cube edges. We just want to change all of the sizes from the default  to 10m.

Now we will apply a tag that will animate the cube for us. If right click the cube object in the Objects panel you will be given a menu of tags that you can apply along with some other settings and modifiers. We want to navigate to the CINEMA 4D Tags submenu and click on the Vibrate tag towards the bottomto apply it to our cube.

If you are familiar with After Effects you can think of this tag as something similar to the wiggle expression. This will allow you to create random movement on either your position, scale or rotation. For this project we only need to enable the vibrating on our position. I have set the amplitude to 500m to the X, Y and Z and the frequency to 1.2. If you set your amplitude to higher numbers for your object, you will make it move in a wider area. The higher the settings for frequency will create movements with a higher velocity or rate.

Next we are going to go into the menu bar and under the MoGraph module window we will create a Tracer Mograph Object. What the tracer does is track an object and creates splines based on the objects motion.

If you had the cube still selected when you created your Tracer then it should automatically have a link created between the two. If not select the Tracer object in the Object panel and then drag the cube into the box next to “Trace Link” in the Attribute panel. If you play a preview you will see multiple splines being drawn in behind the cube. This project we only need one so we will in the only need one spline so you need to uncheck the Trace Vertices option. Now if you preview again you should only see a single spline following the cube.

We are going to be creating the flying water asset using Sweep NURBS. First lets create a Circle Spline.

Then we will create a Sweep Nurbs Object. For a sweep object you need two splines. The default settings will use the first spline as the shape that will be created along the the length of the second spline. I guess that you could sort of think of it as a die like on those old Play-Do press toys. The second spline determines the path that the shape is created on.

We need to highlight the Circle spline and the Tracer object that is creating a spline and then drag them on top of the Sweep NURBS object. Once you drop the two objects it will nest them inside of the Sweep NURBS object. You want to have the circle spline on the top of the stack. Once you have done this you should see a similar shape to the one in the screenshot above. If you don’t see anything you may need to scrub the preview playhead around until you see the shape.

We don’t need quite a thick of stream of water so you can change the diameter by clicking on the circle spline and in the attributes panel changing the radius to something like 30m.

Now that I look at the shape of the stream I am not pleased with the way it clips into itself. To fix this I am going to change the random Seed that the path is created with. We will need to go to the objects panel and click on the small vibrate tag icon (the purple circle with comic vibration lines) next to the cube object. Then in the attributes panel start changing the seed number until you find a shape that you like. I would suggest taking the preview playhead to the end of your preview timeline so you can see the full shape.

Next we are going to modify the scale that the circle spline is rendered along the tracer spline. To do this you need to click on the Sweep NURBS object then in the object tab twirl open the “Details” options. What we want to do is now start to drage the points on the scale so that we can create a little more random looking shape.

You can add new points by clicking on the line where there currently isn’t a point. You can create a lot of different shapes but for this asset I would suggest you move the scale points all the way down on the start and end to create a pinched off look.

If you do a preview now you see that the shape continues to grow and the custom scaling on the sweep continues to stretch out. For this effect I want the sweep to be a limited length. To do this we will click on the tracer object then in the Object tab we will find the option for limit and set it to “From End.”

Finally we will adjust the amount to your liking. It looks like I chose to use 17, if you are bad at making decisions then go ahead and use 17 also. We are now done with part 1 of this tutorial. Now if you do a preview you should have a little grey worm like thing flying around your screen and not looking a lot like water.

But don’t worry in part 2 we will be creating a material to apply to this sweep object asset to make it look a little more exciting. Then we will end this tutorial in part 3 by making our flying water stop and form into a shape. If you render the project out so far it will probably look more jagged than the preview video I posted above. I added a HyperNURBS and turned on ambient occlusion.

If you have any questions or comments please leave them in the comments section below and I will answer them as quickly as possible. Or if you have any suggestions for future tutorials you would like to see please head over to the about page and send me an email with your suggestion.